AMD has hired JPMorgan Chase explore options, including the sale of patents, and possibly the sale of the entire company, reports Reuters. They attribute this to "sources familiar with the situation," but also have the following statement from AMD confirming the possibility of selling off technology, but stating the company itself is not on the market: "AMD's board and management believe that the strategy the company is currently pursuing to drive long-term growth by leveraging AMD's highly-differentiated technology assets is the right approach to enhance shareholder value. AMD is not actively pursuing a sale of the company or significant assets at this time." Thanks nin via Gizmodo.

I'm wondering if Apple will make a push to buy them. There's already rumors that they may be moving away from Intel to do their own, this would give them a good head start. If there are talks already, their relationship with Intel may already be shaky. Unless they plan to use the AMD chips for MacBook Air and smaller devices as AMD is known for their low-power consumption and keep the Intel chips for their iMac's, MacBook Pro's and Mac Pro's.

Armengar wrote on Nov 14, 2012, 03:55:I still use an unlocked BE phenom 2 (x4 B50). Very decent for the price paid. As others have said, expect the majority to be affording celerons only if AMD go under.

Ditto, got a Phenom2 555BE and unlocked to a QuadCore B55 @ 3.6GHZ, stable 24/7 for 2 years now. Paid $80 for this CPU. It will be a sad day when AMD is no longer providing alternatives to Intel's CPU's.. but I've already decided to buy an Intel next time I upgrade.. unless something drastic changes with AMD's lineup between now and then.

theyarecomingforyou wrote on Nov 14, 2012, 02:17:. It would be great to go back to AMD processors but they just don't cut it for top-tier gaming any more.

You should look at the piledriver(especially the 8350 vishera's) benches especially with some of the new optimizations around. They're at, equal or beat the I7, in other cases under perform by just abit and you're paying $150 less for the chip.

My previous rig before my 965x4BE was a dualcore intel, I'm looking at building a new rig soonish and I'll probably be sticking with AMD. Though even with that, I'm still arguing as to whether or not to upgrade at all, this current rig is still chugging along fine nearly 3 years later and I'm still not seeing serious problems with gaming. I might just wait 9mo for the prices to bottom out and pick up some of the stuff cheap.

--"For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong." --H.L. Mencken

eRe4s3r wrote on Nov 13, 2012, 23:34:Blame the Athlon XP - because that was when AMD started to drop the ball. This was the short time where they had a serious lead, and could have afforded to push the tech forward with a serious jump into dual and quad core cpu's that could have bested the core stuff from Intel by a margin and in price, doubling efficiency, investing in new architecture and cpu design that makes them even more effective etc.... They did nothing of the sort. And then Core tech and I7 came, and AMD got totally pwned.

That's utter nonsense. The Athlon XP did fine and it was followed up by the Athlon 64, which gave AMD the performance advantage and had gamers flocking to it. It was the first time AMD was taken seriously in the industry, forcing Intel to play catch up with regards to 64bit. The issue was that its successor - the Athlon 64 X2 - required a new chipset, meaning all the advantage it had built up was lost. That wouldn't have been an issue had Intel not released the Core 2, which simply smoked the competition.

I'd been an AMD user since the K5 back in the mid-90s but they lost the performance edge when Intel launched the Core 2 and they weren't any cheaper either, which had been one of their previous strengths. Since then I've been an Intel user. It would be great to go back to AMD processors but they just don't cut it for top-tier gaming any more.

Ditto. I had XP, 754, and 939. Good AMD CPUs until Intel came back and slapped them down!

eRe4s3r wrote on Nov 13, 2012, 23:34:Blame the Athlon XP - because that was when AMD started to drop the ball. This was the short time where they had a serious lead, and could have afforded to push the tech forward with a serious jump into dual and quad core cpu's that could have bested the core stuff from Intel by a margin and in price, doubling efficiency, investing in new architecture and cpu design that makes them even more effective etc.... They did nothing of the sort. And then Core tech and I7 came, and AMD got totally pwned.

That's utter nonsense. The Athlon XP did fine and it was followed up by the Athlon 64, which gave AMD the performance advantage and had gamers flocking to it. It was the first time AMD was taken seriously in the industry, forcing Intel to play catch up with regards to 64bit. The issue was that its successor - the Athlon 64 X2 - required a new chipset, meaning all the advantage it had built up was lost. That wouldn't have been an issue had Intel not released the Core 2, which simply smoked the competition.

I'd been an AMD user since the K5 back in the mid-90s but they lost the performance edge when Intel launched the Core 2 and they weren't any cheaper either, which had been one of their previous strengths. Since then I've been an Intel user. It would be great to go back to AMD processors but they just don't cut it for top-tier gaming any more.

It's highly unlike they could. But if they did, we're have a monopoly in the discrete GPU market. NVIDIA would still continue to iterate, but they'd do so in a fashion similar to Intel with their Core CPUs: a periodic upgrade at fixed price intervals with few-to-no price cuts in between.

Blame the Athlon XP - because that was when AMD started to drop the ball. This was the short time where they had a serious lead, and could have afforded to push the tech forward with a serious jump into dual and quad core cpu's that could have bested the core stuff from Intel by a margin and in price, doubling efficiency, investing in new architecture and cpu design that makes them even more effective etc.... They did nothing of the sort. And then Core tech and I7 came, and AMD got totally pwned.

Parallax Abstraction wrote on Nov 13, 2012, 22:49:I doubt that would even get past regulators to be honest.

Since intel has the most market share for their integrated crap... nVidia could probably get around the regulators on that alone. As far as professional graphics... I think Matrox and S3 are still around serving very niche markets like medical imagery. Basically... it looks possible... and would be like how they swallowed 3DFX.